Travel, Not Books

Hi!
A real short travel (though account is not so brief) is the first post this year. Here's the link.
BENARES

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Painted Veil: W. Somerset Maugham

Image
  The Painted Veil: W. Somerset Maugham Make-believe and the Real Title of Maugham’s books, especially his novels, are always intriguing. A critic once poohpoohed one of his books saying it had the usual Maugham fare - a mishmash of old themes. His next story collection was titled, Mixture as Before. Title and epigraph of The Painted Veil come from P.B. Shelley’s poem Lift Not the Painted Veil. It is more profitable to read the complete poem – presuming one hasn’t read it yet – after they have finished the book. One can then variously interpret Maugham’s allusion to a painted veil. In the preface, Maugham recounts how he came to write the book. ‘I think that this is the only novel I have written in which I started from a story rather than from a character. It is difficult to explain the relation between character and plot. You cannot very well think of a character in the void; the moment you think of him, you think of him in some situation, doing something.' Idea for the s...
Read more

Travels with My Aunt-Graham Greene

Image
Dictionary defines travel as: to go from one place to another, especially over a long distance. This is travel in space. We travel not only in space, but also in time. Einstein unequivocally equated time with space, making it the fourth dimension of the Space-Time matrix. But time and space have always been used interchangeably in language: Past is behind us while future lies ahead, opportunity passes-us by, and a deadline approaches insidiously. We intuitively speak of life as a journey through the landscape of time , as one is born, grows old, and dies. Unlike travel in space, travel in time is involuntary and inescapable. Other than space and time, humans travel in another dimension in their lives. This is travel in relations with other human beings. Each one of us is veritably a different landscape; Each has a distinctive personality shaped by their unique experiences in lives. Knowing a variety of individuals, interacting with them, and nurturing relations with some, enriches ...
Read more

Graveyards of Mind

Words lie inert on the pages of a book. Process of reading breathes life into them – and the inanimate squiggle of ink on paper wakes up with vigour. Sensibilities and idiosyncrasies of a reader endow the same book with various lives in the minds of different readers. I am often astounded to discover that books which moved me to peaks of ecstasy or depths of gloom, have fallen off the conscience of other readers like water off a duck’s back. Way of looking at the world is shaped by our nature. No two natures are alike. Hence, a book cannot evoke mirror worlds in different minds. Reading a book is an experience like all else in life. Except that it is intensely personal, often involves heightened emotions and feelings, and changes the reader a little, although, only occasionally, and perhaps transiently. Philosophers and physicists do not accord time a prime role in a material world, but the world unfolds in our consciousness on a melody set by time. We experience life in its in...
Read more